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The Gurgling Cod

Avryan-
Lots of hits on Google, or even just lots of info available, does not equal a good topic. My day job is helping people with this stuff, so holler at me at fesser at gmail dot com, if you are still stuck. Good luck.

I still don't understand. Two guys who work for the sheriff's office come in to the same restaurant you went to. They were fat, and they looked at you. If they had been skinnier, or if they had ignored you, that would have been better? Maurice's is an effed up establishment, and I'd never eat there, but you seem to be looking for some kind of Deliverance/My Cousin Vinny drama where it does not exist. In general, this is a great post, and one I will print and keep in the glove compartment, but as a transplanted Yankee, it's frustrating fo rme to see writing about the South collapse into caricature again and again.

I'm not a fan of Maurice's, segregation, or Confederate kitsch, but it's hard for me to see how the decor of a chain BBQ restaurant posed a threat to Perlow, such that Kuban is glad he returned safely.

My fave is the guy who comments over at VV that Houston has ballets and operas and whatnot, and all anyone wants to talk about is Purple Drank. When Houston produces a tenor as prominent in his field as Pimp C was in his, then maybe we can talk.

Bastian 363 -
I am not sure how you read an article that begins and ends by exhorting people to fly to New Orleans and eat at Cochon as having a chip on its shoulder. As I tried to clarify in my comment, it is not the absolute price that seemed to be the issue, but rather those prices for Southern-Cajun influenced food in a casual setting, as opposed to the world of bechamel and tablecloths.

I imagine there are many places Uptown that would run to the un-fratty where you might find fried gator now and again -- Atchafalaya comes to mind, but it is a dish I associate with, say Cooter Brown's, Bon Temps, and the River Shack up in Jefferson, and while I have never actually been vomited on by a Tulane student there, there have been times when it seemed likely. As I tried to make clear in the description, my issue was not that the gator might be vulgar, but that any meat deep-fried and then doused in mayonnaise might run that risk. I love porky, fatty dishes, and made no complaint about the preponderance of them, and in fact steered that way in what we ordered, though I was sorry not to have the chance to try more seafood and the rabbit.

I loved Cochon, and made that abundantly clear in the review, as a former denizen, I've been a booster of New Orleans, its people and its food for about as long as I've been doing The Gurgling Cod.http://thegurglingcod.typepad.com/thegurglingcod/excursions_incursions_nola/index.html
Since the storm, the formerly rotating tagline has stayed "9th Ward, Where ya at?" I have a donation button for WWOZ. I bitched about the Esquire article as hard as anyone when it came out. Closer to black and gold pom-poms on either hand than a chip on my shoulder, in my book.

Of course they do not -- for a city of its size, New Orleans supports a remarkable number of serious old school fancy restaurants. You can't get a table at Maison Robert in Boston anymore, but Commander's, Antoine's, Clancy's etc are going strong in New Orleans. What I meant is that the distinction between haute and street has not been blurred as it has in New York. I suspect it may have something to do with how in New York, you can see relatively wealthy and powerful individuals dressed like Bart Simpson.

I brought a bag of Daniel Boone stone ground grits and a stick of Split Creek chevre as hostess gifts with me on a recent trip to NO -- the TSA took a longish look, but let me keep them. In general, the distinction between liquids and gels on one side, and pastes and solids on the other, seems specious and arbitrary. I strongly suspect that such routines, and the shoe and laptop fandango are expressly designed to be inconvenient, to create the illusion of a thorough security screening process.

In re Ed's generous five point plan, the Starbucks 2.0 he already imagines -- better food, free wifi, local flavor, already exists, in the guise of the local coffee shop, which still do hang on in many places. Delocator.net http://delocator.net/
is a useful way to find non-chain coffee.
That said, it all depends on context. The Starbuckses that are squatting in so many of my childhood haunts in Boston are a blight -- the Starbucks sign on Interstate Whatever in the middle of a long drive is an oasis.

That's how the original receipt* reads -- I surmise that the idea is that you add that much more sugar to the beaten whites, but as I prefer to use less sugar than called for with the yolks, adding that much more sugar seems unnecessary. Basically, ignore the 4 tb to be added. The Jr. league receipts, while fascinating culturally, are sometimes a bit wiggly in their instructions, I suspect because they are culled from index cards or transmitted orally or demonstratively. Add the additional element that in many cases, the actual person doing the actual cooking may be different from the titular Junior Leaguer, and you can see how things can get out of sorts.

That's not a bad question. I know that it went pretty fast, but we had a lot of folks, and people were pouring big or little, as inclination moved them. There is 3-3.5 Q of liquid, + the volume of the eggs, which if you divide by 6 oz puts you in the ballpark of 15-20 servings -- but that is very rough guesstimating. Also, not sure how making a mini quantity would work, in terms of the way the eggs behave. I'd make the whole batch, and foist it on unsuspecing neighbors.
Good luck.

"Throughout this book, as you will see,
We never mention recipe,-
The reason beint that we felt
(Though well aware how it is spelt!),
That it is modern and not meet
To use in place of old receipt
To designate time-honored dishes
According to ancestral wishes."

I have not cooked from it myself, but I have heard some mutterings from print types that the recipes in the Waters book could have been more rigorously tested. For the right person, the River Cottage Meat Book would be great, though be careful flipping through it as you gather around the tree to unwrap gifts, as there are some very honest illustration of how and where we get meat. There's obviously an inclination to sort through this year's batch of cookbooks, but for the kind of folks who read SE, and the kind of people they would be exchanging gifts with, the Zuni book is hard to beat, as far as taking an enthusiastic cook to a more serious place.

This is a soup specifically for Big Ben. We have been down the hamburger road already. I did consider Italian Wedding Soup, and may well revisit in a future contest. I do not anticipate that the Steelers will be participating in this year's Super Bowl, so the Primanti Bros' soup will have some time to develop,